So, you might hear something like Speedbird 1, taxi via Echo. One of the most common ways in which you might hear the NATO phonetic alphabet when listening to airband radio is when aircraft are told to taxi on certain taxiway. Uses of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet in Civil Aviation Now, let’s take a look at what the actual alphabet looks like, starting with the words used to spell the 26 letters of the standard English alphabet:Īs for numbers, while the words themselves are the same, four of them are pronounced differently from their standard English pronunciation to avoid confusion with other similar words that might be used during radio communication (such as fire and the German word for “no,” “nein”). ![]() And, since then, it has been adopted by many organizations including the International Civil Aviation Organization. The NATO phonetic alphabet as we know it today wasn’t adopted until 1957. to decrease the chances for misunderstanding and misrepresentation as much as possible. This involved comparing the words to similar words in several major languages including English, French, etc. The first such internationally recognized alphabet was developed by the International Radio Consultative Committee (the predecessor of the International Telecommunication Union).įrom there on, research has been conducted into what the ideal words to use were and what their pronunciation should be. The use of this kind of alphabets later on spread into the civil world as well. Initially, they were mainly used in military radio communications – they were a necessity as the low quality of transmissions often led to misunderstandings in the technology’s beginnings. Since the alphabet is also used extensively in aviation – both civil and military – I decided to write this article looking a bit at its history, as well as at the alphabet itself and its uses in civil aviation.Ī Brief History of the NATO Phonetic AlphabetĪlphabets like the NATO phonetic alphabet have been in use for about a century now. I’m excited to introduce you to my world and I’m looking forward to hearing from you.If you ever watched a war movie or similar, you likely heard of “Zulu time.” Similarly, you might have encountered people using words like “Alpha” and “Bravo” when trying to spell something out.Īll of those words are code words that NATO assigned to letters in the alphabet and turned into the NATO phonetic alphabet to make it easier to spell things over the radio and to avoid confusion. In August 2020, I registered my company Dong Digital in Zürich and officially started my career as an app developer. In 2019, I made a big career change and since then I’ve been learning programming and app making. I strongly recommend the latter as it is how the alphabet is commonly used in reality. In both the levels and challenges, you can answer either by typing or by speaking. In a level, you have unlimited tries and time to test your knowledge while in a challenge, you must answer within a short period of time and make less than 3 mistakes to pass it. On the Train page, the 26 letters are grouped into 9 levels and in between there are several challenges. Try to remember the word representations of the letters and their pronunciation (3 as a group) and train your knowledge on the Train page. On the Explore page, you can see the 26 letters of the English alphabet (as well as number 0 – 9, decimal, hundred and thousand), their word representations and their pronunciation, and you can click them to hear their official pronunciation. It was created for those who exchange voice messages by radio or telephone to understand the 26 letters of the English alphabet and numbers more easily, regardless of language differences or the quality of the connection. ![]() Besides the aforementioned rather unique feature, the app also helps to explore and learn the names of the 26 letters, numbers and so on and translate words, phrases as well as combinations such as your license plate number.Īs the most widely used radiotelephone spelling alphabet, the NATO Phonetic Alphabet is also commonly known as the NATO Spelling Alphabet, ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) Phonetic/Spelling Alphabet or International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. What’s more, you can choose to train the names by typing or speaking, and I strongly recommend the latter as it’s much more useful in real life. Different from most apps in the App Store or Google Play store, NATO Alphabet focuses on practice and trains your knowledge of the names of the 26 letters.
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